Graduation - New Beginnings

 Throughout the month of May high schools, colleges and universities will graduate the class of 2024.  The universities of Michigan, Tennessee and Washington State, among others, will lead the way on May 4.

 Young men and women will line up this month robed in caps and gowns grinning at their friends. Their eyes scan the audience, peering past dangling tassels in search of family members who search for them.  Cameras and cell phones light up stadiums and auditoriums with bursts of light as proud parents try to capture the magic of the moment. 

 All graduates who walk across stages to receive their diplomas represent unique stories.   Few are as unique as World War II Veteran Bob Zonneville  who graduated from Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio at age 88 in 2013.  Zonneville fought in the 8^th Infantry Division across Europe and participated in the Battle of the Bulge. He was twice wounded, once by a hand grenade and later by artillery shrapnel.

 Zonneville says he started college in his eighties because of his wife, Carol, who passed away in 2008.  A career schoolteacher, she constantly urged him to get his college education. “I thought, maybe in her memory, I ought to do it.”   Given the opportunity to enroll in non-credit courses at his advanced age Zonneville said, “Nah. I’ll pay the tuition.  I’m going to be a student.  I’m going to get the credits.  I’m going to do the work.”

 At the time, one 19-year-old classmate said, “He’s also always telling us to do better for ourselves and keep succeeding.”  One professor said, “His enthusiasm is contagious, and his positive outlook on our younger generation is refreshing.” Today Zonneville is 101 and still active in his hometown of Mentor, Ohio where he recently spoke at a community gathering.

 Graduation commencements inspire us because they not only recognize significant achievement, they celebrate new beginnings, new possibilities and opportunities.  Education offers the young the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills that equip them for the future.  For those who are older, it offers the opportunity to re-tool, to start over, to pursue new dreams. 

 As important as education is, nothing compares to a spiritual transformation that connects us with God and places in our hearts the values that make life meaningful.  Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” (Proverbs 1:7).  In Ezekiel God said, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26).

 God is always about new beginnings.  He offers the young the opportunity to launch their lives on the path that leads to life and, to those who are older, the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start over. Whether or not you hold a formal degree from an institution, whether you are nineteen or ninety, you can make a new start on life through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul wrote in Corinthians “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.”  (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Surviving An Insane World

Our world seems increasingly insane.  We are entering a Presidential election year with two aged candidates.  Each one accuses the other of senility! One is in court on trial for criminal acts. Neither party has met to nominate a candidate, but there are no other options in sight.

 All wars are insane, but the wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza seem especially so.  Islamic terrorists have turned to attacks on Russia with the U.S. and the West still in their sights. 

Transgender women are wanting to compete in women’s sports. Caitlin Jenner, who won the Olympic decathlon when she was Bruce, has come out against trans women competing in women’s sports while Dawn Staley, coach of NCAA women’s champion basketball team, defends it.

We live our lives under a canopy of satellite communications that determine much of our daily lives.  Artificial Intelligence is at the door, threatening to distort perceptions of reality and, perhaps, take over!

Of course, the world has always had its insanity. Wars with their atrocities that leave innocent victims in their wake have always been with us.  Ancient Greece and Rome were no less conflicted about gender identity and sexuality than we are.  One needs only read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to document the insanity of that day. While the digital world is new, efforts to confuse and distort perceptions of the truth are not. Pilate, while judging Jesus, asked the same question that is being asked today, “What is truth?”

 Interestingly, the Apostle Paul was accused of being insane when he was imprisoned at Caesarea.  After Paul told Festus and King Agrippa that he was a persecutor of Christians until Jesus himself appeared to him, Festus interrupted and said, “You are out of your mind Paul! Your great learning has driven you insane!"  To which Paul responded, “I am not insane. What I am saying is true and reasonable,” (Acts 26).

If we wish to preserve our sanity in an insane world, we need to choose Paul’s “insanity.” Faith in Jesus Christ leads to the discovery that God loves us.  “This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,” (1 John 4:10).

`Having experienced God’s love, we are free to love one another, as Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” (John 13:34). And again, “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  …  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” (Matthew 5:43-48).

Paul defined love in this way. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails,” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

 However insane the world may seem, this always remains true and reasonable, to know God’s love and to love others, especially those who differ from us in appearance and opinion. 

Words

 When we were children we had a saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  We usually quoted this little jingle when words had hurt us, and it was usually followed by sticking out our tongue for emphasis.  Somehow this ditty has been passed down through the generations, even though it is not true. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can destroy us.

It is not the well thought out words that give us trouble, words that we wrestle with before writing them down, words that we edit a dozen times before finally putting them in print.  The words that trouble us and cause our difficulty are the careless words, the thoughtless words, the words that escape our lips without thinking.  These words cannot be called back.  Unlike animals escaped from the cage, words cannot be hunted down and returned to captivity.

 Sometimes the careless words run rampant, causing unknown damage without our knowledge.  We don’t even remember what we said, or when we said it. But the damage is done, nonetheless. 

 We try to bury our careless words beneath repeated apologies.  “I’m sorry.”  Or “I didn’t mean it.”  Sometimes we are forgiven.  Sometimes others claim to overlook them. But words are rarely forgotten.  They lodge in the memory and cast a shadow on everything else. 

 Jesus said, “I tell you that men will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken.” (Matt. 12:36) Jesus was referring to our final judgment before God.  Ultimately, when we stand before Him we will be required to give account for every careless word.  Perhaps he had something else in mind.  Perhaps He was drawing our attention to the reality of human relations.  Careless words destroy relationships. 

 We have seen prominent careers come to an abrupt end due to careless words spoken in the public arena.  Like the classic movie, A Face In the Crowd, few are able to overcome racial slurs and arrogant expletives caught on an open microphone.  But more damaging to us all are the careless words spoken in the privacy of our homes. Careless words chip away at relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children.  They leave families fractured and psyches shattered.

 On the other hand, an encouraging word, the right word spoken at the right time, can make an enormous difference.  The opposite of careless words is not careful words, words that are guarded and self-serving, but caring words, words that are spoken in the interest of others.

 Nothing is more important than learning the discipline of our speech.  James compared the tongue to the small rudder that turns a huge ship, or the bit placed in the mouth of a horse, able to harness the animal's great strength.  Careless words, he said, are like sparks that ignite an uncontrollable fire that consumes everything in its path.  “If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.” (James 3:2).

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Young Messiah

 We don’t know much about Jesus’ childhood. For the most part, the Bible is silent regarding these years.  We do know that Joseph took his family to Egypt following Jesus’ birth in order to protect the child from King Herod’s paranoid wrath.  After their departure from Bethlehem, Herod’s soldiers attacked the small village slaughtering all the male children under the age of two. The event was consistent with Herod’s brutal rule. We can only imagine the grief and sorrow suffered by the Bethlehemites.

 Joseph made a home for the family in Egypt and waited.  When Herod died, Joseph and Mary returned with their young family to their home in Nazareth.   Matthew points out that this was a fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”  (Matthew 2:15). 

 Anne Rice wrote a book that was later made into a movie based on this time in Jesus’ life, Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt.  The book and the movie try to imagine what Jesus would have been like as a child, how He and His family would have wrestled with the growing awareness of His identity.  The Bible only tells us that “He grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” 

 Almost as interesting as the movie’s plot is the journey of the author who wrote the book upon which it is based.  Anne Rice grew to fame writing the Vampire Chronicles while professing to be an atheist. She shocked the secular world when, in 2002, she announced she was done with vampires. After thirty-eight years as a professed atheist, she said she had found faith in Christ and returned to the Catholic Church.

 Eight years later, she rocked the Christian world by proclaiming she was renouncing Christianity. She stated, "For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity.” She went on to say, “My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me.”  Rice died December 11, 2021 at the age of 80.

 Anne represents many who continue to believe in Christ but have left organized Christian churches. George Barna, the leading researcher on faith in America, reported in 2008 that “a majority of adults now believe that there are various biblically legitimate alternatives to participation in a conventional church.” It appears that there is a growing number of people who claim faith in Jesus but want little or nothing to do with the institutional church.

 Worldwide, we are witnessing the largest growth in the number of Jesus followers in history. The number of believers in Africa grew from 9 million to 360 million in the last century. More Muslims have come to faith in Christ in the last two decades than at any other time in history.  Churches, what they look like and how they function, are changing while the number of Jesus followers is growing.

Season of Doubt

 This is the week after Easter.  The week of doubting. 

 On that first day of the week, the day we celebrate as Easter, Jesus appeared early to the women at the tomb.  That same day, he also appeared to two sojourners on their way to Emmaus, a village about 7 miles distant from Jerusalem. The women and those who saw him at Emmaus returned and  reported what they saw to the disciples who were in hiding. 

According to Mark’s account. Mary Magdalene was the first to report to his disciples. “When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.  After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. They went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either,” (Mark 16:11-13).

That evening, Jesus appeared to his disciples, ten of them, at least.  According to John, Thomas was not there. They told Thomas about what they had seen. But Thomas would not accept it. He said, “ ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ “(John 20:25).   For a full week Thomas continued in his doubt and his refusal until the following Sunday when Jesus appeared to them again with Thomas present.  He fell on his knees and said, “ ‘“My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.’ ”(John 20:28-29). 

 Later, when Jesus met with them in Galilee and issued his great commission, Matthew states, “When they saw Him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful,” (Matthew 28:17).

 I am glad the Scripture included these references.  I am glad that God is greater than our doubts.  We don’t have to have all the answers.  All of our knowledge is partial. None is perfect. None is complete.  But, we can believe.  Often, we are like the father who cried to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

 Sometimes we doubt because we are disillusioned or disappointed by those in whom we placed our trust.  People will fail us. Sometimes we doubt because life doesn’t turn out the way we expected.  Sometimes we doubt because the innocent suffer and die.  A loved one dies, and we struggle with grief and loss. Sometimes we doubt because of the violence and war that continues unabated.

 And yet, there is something deep within that speaks to us. A voice that will not be silent, even though it may be nothing more than a whisper.  For me, it is the voice of the Savior speaking to Jairus after his servant has told him that his daughter is dead.  “Stop fearing, only believe.”  There is someone greater, someone higher, there is something better and beyond our best imagination.  We were given a glimpse when Jesus was raised from the dead.